Rupert Murdoch: Emperor Of All Things Electronic!

The question, koan-like in its infinitude and all-meaningfulness, of whether Rupert Murdoch‘s self-importance outstrips his actual importance at last seems capable of an answer.  Today, one of Murdoch’s papers, The Australian, carries a story on a briefing Murdoch gave to announce the unexpectedly rosy results his media conglomerate, Newscorps, enjoyed last quarter.  Last year, around this time, Newscorps posted losses in excess of $US 6.4 billion.  This year, it posted a comparatively trivial, if emotionally satisfying, $254 million profit.

This was big news, for Murdoch.  Kingmaker and warmonger, proprietor of the most Fair and Balanced vehicle for right wing rancor around, Murdoch had nonetheless struggled, over the past few years, to reprise his successes with the broadsheets and cable-box online.  Indeed, Michael Wolff, of Newser and Vanity Fair, went so far as to suggest that the reflexively bellicose Murdoch (“War is Murdoch’s natural state,” Wolff averred) had gone to battle against the net.

So Murdoch was feeling understandably happy on the occasion of this briefing – his inaugural digital success.  Though, in truth, independent observers ascribed Newscorps’s resurgence less to the success of Murdoch’s paywall-scheme, or any other of Newscorps’s gaspingly clever cyber-ploys, than to an upswing in the global advertising markets. But why let facts like that get in the way.  Murdoch was feeling, to put it mildly, keyed-up.  Still, it’s hard to imagine any other media grandee, however tickled – and they do get grand, these grandees — giving a statement to the press quite like this.  The transcript reads like a séance with an unusually smug Ming emperor.  The Australian quotes him:

“Excuse the immodesty but News Corporation’s pre-eminence as a content creator comes as the debate over the primacy of content is over,” [Murdoch] said, referring to his campaign to get consumers to pay for online news and entertainment. “Content is not just king. It is the emperor of all things electronic. We are on the cusp of a digital dynasty in which our company and our shareholders will profit greatly.”

One helplessly appreciates a figure who, forgoing the default bromides of the press conference, addresses his public in this sort of balls-out, oracular style.  As a soundbyte, it certainly beats the hell out of, say, ten seconds of Bill Gates.  You want predictions, of the high-strung, brazen, self-applauding variety?  Murdoch’s your man.  Still, it all makes one want to give one’s Bible a double-check.  Was it the meek, or The Murdochs, that were destined to inherit the earth?